Romans 15:1–6
“Now we who are strong ought to bear the weaknesses of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each one of us please his neighbor for that which is good, to be building him up. For even Christ didn’t please himself. But, as it is written, ‘The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.’ For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that through perseverance and through encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. Now the God of perseverance and of encouragement grant you to be of the same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus, that with one accord you may with one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Paul has spent Romans 14 addressing disagreements between Christians whose consciences differ. The strong understand that food is clean and that the disputed practices do not determine a believer’s standing before God. The weak remain restricted by convictions the strong do not share. Paul has refused to make the weak conscience law for the whole church, but he has also refused to let the strong treat liberty as permission to disregard the weak.
Romans 15 continues the same argument.
“We who are strong ought to bear the weaknesses of the weak.”
Paul identifies himself with the strong. He does not pretend that both positions reflect equal understanding merely because both believers are sincere. The strong understand a freedom the weak do not yet possess in conscience. Yet that greater understanding creates greater responsibility.
The strong Christian is not given freedom merely to enjoy having fewer restrictions. He is to use his strength for the good of someone who does not yet possess it.
Paul then gives the pattern governing that responsibility: “For even Christ didn’t please himself.”
The argument has moved from food and days to Christ himself. The believer who insists upon exercising every liberty because he has the right to do so must measure that instinct against the Lord who did not order his life around pleasing himself.
Christian maturity therefore involves more than knowing what one is free to do. It includes becoming like Christ in what one is willing to surrender for the good of another.
Bear the Weaknesses of the Weak
Romans 15:1
“Now we who are strong ought to bear the weaknesses of the weak, and not to please ourselves.”
Paul’s language is deliberately demanding. The strong “ought” to bear the weaknesses of the weak. This is not merely an admirable option for unusually patient Christians. The freedom and understanding possessed by the strong create an obligation toward those who are weaker.
To bear another person’s weakness means more than tolerating his presence while privately resenting the inconvenience he causes. Paul has already commanded the strong not to despise the weak. Now he requires them to carry the burden that weakness creates within Christian fellowship.
That burden may be frustrating precisely because the strong believer knows the restriction is unnecessary. He knows the food is clean and that he could partake with a clear conscience. Yet the weakness of his brother may require him to limit what he would otherwise be free to do.
Paul does not respond by telling him that the weak brother should simply become mature more quickly. He tells the strong believer not to please himself.
Strength in the body of Christ therefore creates responsibility. The believer who possesses greater understanding is better equipped to bear with the person who possesses less.
The question is no longer merely what the strong believer is permitted to do, but what his strength enables him to bear for someone else.
For His Good, to Build Him Up
Romans 15:2
“Let each one of us please his neighbor for that which is good, to be building him up.”
Paul’s command not to please ourselves could be misunderstood as requiring Christians simply to accommodate whatever another person wants. He immediately prevents that conclusion.
The Christian seeks to please his neighbor “for that which is good, to be building him up.”
The goal is the neighbor’s good, not the neighbor’s control.
Paul is not giving the weak believer authority to dictate the lives of stronger Christians. Romans 14 has already established that the weak are not to judge those who exercise their liberty. Their restrictive conscience does not become God’s command for everyone else.
The strong nevertheless considers what will build the weak brother up.
That gives Christian accommodation a direction. The purpose is not to preserve weakness indefinitely. The weak believer should grow, and his conscience should become increasingly instructed by truth. But growth is pursued through edification rather than pressure.
Sometimes love will require restraint. At other times building someone up may involve patient instruction. What Paul excludes is the attitude that regards another Christian’s weakness merely as an obstacle to personal freedom.
The brother is someone to be built up, and the stronger believer’s conduct should serve that end.
Christ Did Not Please Himself
Romans 15:3
“For even Christ didn’t please himself. But, as it is written, ‘The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.’”
Paul grounds his command in Christ.
The strong Christian may find continually considering another person’s weakness burdensome. Paul does not deny that bearing with another person can be costly. He directs the believer toward the one whose own obedience was not governed by self-interest.
“Even Christ didn’t please himself.”
Paul quotes Psalm 69:9:
“The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.”
Psalm 69 describes the suffering of the righteous servant whose zeal for God brings reproach upon himself. Paul applies that pattern to Christ, whose faithfulness to the Father brought upon himself the hostility directed against God.
Christ’s obedience was not governed by the pursuit of personal comfort.
That gives Paul’s instruction concerning Christian liberty its deepest foundation. The strong believer does not restrain himself merely because maintaining peace is socially convenient. He does so because Christ establishes the pattern by which Christian strength is exercised.
Paul is not equating declining food with the sufferings of Christ. He is identifying the disposition that governs both. If Christ did not make pleasing himself the controlling principle of his life, his people cannot make personal preference the controlling principle of theirs.
Christian liberty is exercised under the lordship of the one who gave himself for others.
Written for Our Learning
Romans 15:4
“For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that through perseverance and through encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.”
Paul’s quotation from the Psalms leads him to explain how Christians should understand the Scriptures written before them.
“Whatever things were written before were written for our learning.”
The Old Testament belongs to the instruction of the Christian church.
Paul does not treat Israel’s Scriptures as irrelevant because Christians live after the coming of Christ. Nor does their original historical setting prevent them from instructing believers who live later. The same Scriptures from which Paul has just drawn the pattern fulfilled in Christ continue to teach God’s people.
That instruction produces perseverance, encouragement, and hope.
The Scriptures reveal God’s faithfulness throughout his dealings with his people. They show suffering without abandonment, promises awaiting fulfillment, judgment accompanied by mercy, and the purposes of God continuing through circumstances that appeared to threaten them.
The Christian learns perseverance because Scripture teaches him to understand present circumstances in light of God’s faithfulness. He receives encouragement because God’s people have endured before him. He possesses hope because the God who acted faithfully remains the God upon whom the future depends.
Paul’s use of Psalm 69 demonstrates the point. A text concerning the suffering of God’s faithful servant becomes part of the church’s understanding of Christ and therefore part of the instruction by which Christians learn to live.
The Scriptures written beforehand continue to form the people of God.
The God of Perseverance and Encouragement
Romans 15:5
“Now the God of perseverance and of encouragement grant you to be of the same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus,”
Paul moves naturally from the encouragement of Scripture to “the God of perseverance and of encouragement.”
The Scriptures encourage because the God revealed through them is the one from whom perseverance and encouragement come.
Paul therefore turns his instruction into prayer.
The unity he desires cannot be reduced to a technique for managing disagreements. He asks God to grant believers a shared disposition toward one another “according to Christ Jesus.”
Being “of the same mind” cannot mean that every Christian must reach identical conclusions about every disputed matter. Romans 14 would make little sense if uniformity were Paul’s solution. He has allowed differences concerning food and days to remain while commanding believers to receive one another.
The unity Paul seeks is therefore deeper than identical practice.
Strong and weak may continue to differ while sharing the same Christ-shaped commitment toward one another. The strong refuses contempt. The weak refuses judgment. Both belong to the Lord, and both seek the other’s good.
Their common life is ordered “according to Christ Jesus.”
Christian unity is therefore neither the abandonment of truth nor the forced conformity of every conscience. It grows as Christians are shaped by the same Lord.
With One Mouth Glorify God
Romans 15:6
“that with one accord you may with one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Paul now reveals the goal toward which his argument has been moving.
The disagreement began with Christians eating differently. It ends with Christians worshiping together.
The purpose of bearing with one another, refusing judgment, restraining liberty, pursuing peace, and building one another up is not merely a congregation with fewer arguments. Paul is concerned with the glory of God.
“With one accord” and “with one mouth” describe a people whose differences have not destroyed their common worship.
The strong and weak belong to the same Lord, stand before the same judgment seat, depend upon the same mercy, receive instruction from the same Scriptures, and glorify the same God and Father of Jesus Christ.
That shared worship places the dispute in its proper proportion.
A church can become so consumed with secondary disagreements that those disagreements begin to define its people more powerfully than the God they worship. Paul refuses to permit that inversion.
The strong believer does not need to surrender the truth that he is free, and the weak believer does not need to violate his conscience. Both must learn to live together so that their common confession remains greater than their disagreement.
Christ Did Not Please Himself
Romans 14 began with Christians divided over food and days. Paul has not treated those questions as meaningless. Conscience matters. Truth matters. Some believers possess a better understanding of their freedom than others.
Yet throughout the argument Paul has steadily directed attention from the disputed practice toward the people involved.
God has accepted the brother. Christ died for the brother. The brother is God’s work. The Christian must not cause the brother to stumble. The strong must now bear the brother’s weakness.
Paul places Christ himself at the center of that responsibility: “For even Christ didn’t please himself.”
That prevents Christian liberty from becoming Christian self-interest. The strong believer may possess the correct position and still behave wrongly toward the person whose understanding is weaker. Knowledge of freedom does not automatically produce the character required to exercise freedom well.
Christ provides the pattern. His life was directed toward the will of the Father even when obedience brought suffering upon himself. The Christian who belongs to him therefore cannot make personal preference the highest consideration in relationships with other believers.
This does not require preserving weakness indefinitely. Paul wants Christians built up. Growth requires truth, but Christian edification does not proceed through contempt, pressure, or public demonstrations of how much freer one believer is than another. It proceeds according to Christ.
Paul’s quotation from Scripture widens the argument further. The Scriptures written beforehand continue to instruct God’s people, producing perseverance, encouragement, and hope. The God revealed in those Scriptures grants his people the perseverance and encouragement necessary to live together according to Christ Jesus.
The result Paul seeks is larger than the resolution of a disagreement.
Strong and weak, differing in conscience but united in Christ, glorify God together with one mouth.
The strength Paul values is therefore not merely the strength to exercise freedom.
It is the strength to bear with another person when love requires it.